Nancy Lilian Heath (known as Nan) was born in north Staffordshire. At Brownhills High School in the Potteries she excelled at art and music. In 1943 she gained her teaching qualifications from Hereford Teacher Training College. Thereafter she taught for 28 years in Wolstanton, living at home with her mother in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. The school choirs which she trained won awards on two occasions. In 1952 she took a year out from teaching to study at the Bath Academy of Art, which helped her to develop her own particular artistic style.
In the late 1960s Nan first visited the Isles of Scilly on a painting holiday. Returning in 1971, while staying at a guest house on St Mary's, she fell in love with Frank Smith. The couple were married later that year and Nan moved to St Mary's soon after. She continued to paint under her maiden name. Nan's flower-filled watercolour landscapes and seascapes proved so popular that prints of them were produced, to fulfil the demand. In 1989 Frank and Nan opened Nan Heath Studio Four close to their home.
Solo exhibitions of Nan's work were held in the Potteries in 1975 and 1977. Several shows were held over the years at the Isles of Scilly Museum. In 1992, two of her original watercolours were accepted for the annual Royal Academy of Art Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.
Nan's death at the age of 72 was received with widespread shock and sorrow. Her widower Frank Smith died in 2009.
Lucy Heath is a painter and printmaker based in Cornwall and London. She grew up in Tunbridge Wells and was a professional cook for 15 years. In 2009, she became a student at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in Chelsea.
Nowadays her paintings are done in oils, mainly on wood.
She is a regular exhibitor at STISA open exhibitions.
Linda Heaton-Harris is a sculptor of ceramic animals and birds. She has recently settled in Cornwall, and lives near the edge of Bodmin moor.
The 1891 Census lists him as an Artist, born in Headingley, The West Riding of Yorkshire and living at Blue Bell House, St Ives. Tovey sums up his Leeds background as the son of a wine merchant, whilst William was a financially embarassed woollen merchant whose father bailed him out with an annuity, allowing him to take up art instead. He leased the Blue Bell Studio and its yard in St Ives, only to find himself in disputes with locals over rights of way and fencing, etc. His work in art appears to be unregarded and unrecorded, though he belonged to the Arts Club for some period, and was Secretary of the Parish Church Club. He took an active part in the 1892-93 Carnival Masquerades in the town.
Hebblethwaite's prime gift to the St Ives Community appears to be in the way of helping to change attitudes toward not only women's rights, but also and even more strongly to animal welfare (see Tovey, pp340-1). His particular objectives were to prevent the wanton cruelty 'that was often inflicted upon birds and animals by the locals, especially by the children of the fisherfolk' who amused themselves by shooting gulls along the cliff and harbour. The setting of baited hooks, and the maiming of birds that followed this practice was appalling to him, and the RSPCA action in 1917 brought about a cessation of the practice. He also supported action to summon boys for cruelty to ponies and donkeys.
'Hebblethwaite was very much ahead of his time on this issue, and Hudson [W H Hudson, The Land's End] indicated that he found at least twenty people to tell him Hebblethwaite's story and to praise the beneficial impact that he had eventually had.' (Tovey, p341)
Jane Hebburn grew up in the south east of England but has spent most of her working life in Cornwall. She works from a studio at Altarnun, near Launceston.
Abstract and reductionist paintings in oil and mixed media on canvas and panel.
Hedges studied art at Norwich School of Art (1978-1982) and at Chelsea School of Art (1982-1983).
In 1991 he was co-organiser Victoria Studio, Penzance.
In 1993 he was a member of G12 St Ives first group show at the Salt House Gallery, St Ives.
Bobby Helbert left Cornwall at the age of eighteen. He returned recently after 50 years and took the opportunity of developing his artistic inclinations. He is a member of the Padstow Art Group.
Nick Hellyer was born in Cornwall but spent part of his childhood in New Zealand. Later he lived in London, working in the advertising industry, but moved back to Cornwall to paint full-time. Alongside his art practice, he builds and renovates barns and old buildings.
Painter from Karlsruhr, Germany (originally Austrian), associated with St Ives, specifically with Julius OLSSON and Adrian STOKES, and painting en plein air (1902). Specifying an association with St Ives, this artist submitted four paintings to the Whitechapel Exhibition of 1902, including The Towans, Hayle; In the Tregenna Woods; Polperro Harbour and Rhododendrons.
Hemming carves incised and relief images and lettering in stone, slate and wood, taking commissions for his work.
He exhibits with the Lamorna Valley Group and more information is available at http://www.lamornaartsfestival.co.uk/members.php
Lee Hemming lives near Saltash and exhibits with Drawn to the Valley.
Karen Hemsley-Biggs is a self-taught painter who moved from Hampshire to Cornwall in 2002. In 2008 she made her home in the Helford Passage.
Born on 24 May 1841, Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1850 with his parents, who were emigrating due to financial difficulty, Hemy set sail on the Madawaska to Australia. This journey, and their return in 1852, were to be recalled for the rest of his life as having started his love affair with the sea: 'It was imprinted on my mind, and I never forgot it'.
In 1852 Hemy enrolled in Newcastle's Government School of Design under the tutelage of William Bell Scott. An additional encouragement was the work of an uncle, Isaac Henzell, whose influence is noted in some marine paintings. The artist was a life-long and devout Catholic, and for a time in his youth joined as a Brother to French Dominicans at Lyons.
With no settled vocation, from 1862 his life as an artist became his focus. In 1863 he went to study with the Belgian painter Baron Henri Leys, and attended the Antwerp Academy. On the death of Leys he returned to England, where in 1866 he married. From 1869-80 Hemy lived in London, working from a gallery studio in Fulham close to the home of Burne-Jones, the pre-Raphaelite painter, and in the William Morris workshop. The influence of Whistler was strong, and his waterside (Thames) paintings illustrate this.
However, by the 1870s Hemy was looking at other marine locations, and The Harbour of St Ives (1871) is one example amongst others of seaside paintings around Britain. JJ Tissot, a friend of Whistler, was to become a major influence on the more painterly style that Hemy developed during the 1870s when his summers were spent in the fishing ports of Cornwall and Devon. By 1880 he had chosen Falmouth for his future home, and this he had built to his own design and specification. His first wife, Mary, died in that year, and with his second wife, Amy Mary Freeman (whom he married in 1881), he was to have ten children.
The artist visited Newlyn from his home in Falmouth with regularity, and he also exhibited at the Opening Exhibition of Passmore Edwards Art Gallery, Newlyn in 1895. His special friends were his Falmouth fellow artists Henry Scott TUKE and Frank BRANGWYN, another lover of the sea, who would live on to write his memorial appreciation (Fine Art Society Exhibition 1918). He died on 30 September, 1917 in Falmouth, age 76 (GRO).
Born in the year that the Hemys set sail for and returned from Australia (1850), 'Tom' was the artist brother of Charles Napier HEMY and Bernard Benedict HEMY. Though primarily based in North Shields, after studying in Newcastle and under Verlat in Antwerp, he exhibited widely as did his more established older brother.
In 1890 he joined the West Cornwall artists in exhibiting at Dowdeswell with the painting In the Wake of the Pilot off St Ives, and Wood comments that he was fond of painting shipwrecks.
In 1977 John Henderson exhibited his 'Rural Realist' paintings at NAG alongside Ray ATKINS and Robert MORLEY who exhibited paintings, drawings and watercolours. A solo show of his work was also at NAG in 1983, and this was followed up by his inclusion in the mixed retrospective exhibition, 'Happy Returns', to which were invited all of the artists who had held major solo exhibitions in the ten year period 1974-1984. His work has also been exhibited at the Rainyday Gallery, Penzance.
Jackie Henderson is a painter whose work includes equestrian and agricultural subjects. She lives in St Mabyn near Bodmin.
Tom Henderson Smith took a degree in Fine Art at Newcastle University. After further study in Italy on an art scholarship, he undertook a post-graduate teaching certificate at Bristol University. Subsequently he taught for three years at The Arts Educational School in London before taking up a teaching post at Mounts Bay School in Penzance in 1980. Four years later he settled in St Just in Penwith, later retiring from teaching in order to re-launch his painting career, based at The Turn of the Tide Studio.
In 2013 he and his partner, the artist Gabrielle HAWKES, moved from St Just to St Columb, where he worked from The Lanherne Studio.
He was an accomplished painter and draughtsman-designer who exhibited widely. His subjects were drawn from the Cornish landscape, coast and street scenes, especially local festivals.
In 2016 Henderson Smith received the President's Award at the National Acrylic Painters Association summer show in Chichester. In 2017 he was awarded the 'Great Art' Prize at the National Acrylic Painters Association summer show, held in the Crypt Gallery, St Ives.
A regular exhibitor at STISA open shows, he and Gabrielle contributed much over the years to the creative life of St Just, and St Columb.
Tom died in November 2019 after a long illness.
His final project, 'The Dome of Human Kindness', was completed a few months before his death. Conceived in 1972 during his spell in Italy, his eighteen triangular mural canvases were inspired by the religious fresco paintings of Florence. On the artist's return to the UK they were stored in an attic and re-discovered by him in 2013. In 2018 the canvases were bonded onto marine plywood and the structure was assembled in the summer of 2019 and erected in the grounds of the inter-denominational Faith Forum site at Penmount, near Truro.
A posthumous exhibition of Tom Henderson Smith's work, entitled 'Reflections', was held in the Lanherne Studio in St Columb in December 2020.
Hendra's small-scale watercolours feature views, vistas and local events in Constantine.
The artist gave a sending-in address in Bushey, Herts in 1906, and then in Lamorna from 1907. Working from Oriental Cottage, Lamorna, this artist exhibited five paintings at Liverpool in 1909, and within the short period of 1906-09 exhibited there at the Walker with forty-two pieces of work (J&G).
The following year her entry in The Year's Art (1910-11), from the same address, identified her as a Craftworker.
Born in London,and living and working from Maida Vale for most of his working career, Henry exhibited frequently at the RA and at Suffolk Street. Wormleighton mentions him as a non-resident visitor to the Lamorna Valley, but it is not known if he exhibited locally or not.
The artist submitted three paintings to the Whitechapel Exhibition, of Cornish-based artists (1902), from an address in St Ives.
Both E Grace Henry and her husband Paul Henry RHA are noted as visiting St Ives between 1911-20, and both were successful landscape and figure/portrait painters. Their addresses for exhibition purposes are given primarily by J&G and include Liverpool, London, Surrey, Belfast and Dublin, with a final one for Paul being Co Wicklow, Ireland. Though Grace appears to have been the more prolific (exhibiting until 1940), they both exhibited widely, and often in London.
As yet, it is not known whether any of their titles reflect their time, long or short, in Cornwall.
A Canadian potter who travelled to St Ives as an apprentice to Bernard Leach from 1963-1965.
Annie Henry is a sculptor, musician and composer. Her sculptures are loosely based on the human figure. She moved to Cornwall in 2002 to set up her studio in Perranuthnoe. She is a regular exhibitor at Trelissick Gallery near Truro and Trelowarren on the Lizard peninsula.
Henshall is a multi-faceted craftsman and artist who converts driftwood and other woods into well-crafted and designed furniture. He also produces sculpture from found objects, and resin paintings. His creative life includes a great deal of surfing and there are several websites which illustrate his acumen, both in creation and in surfing.
He is married to the abstract painter Maggie HENSHALL.